Language:
English
Year of publication:
2002
Titel der Quelle:
Rethinking History; the Journal of Theory and Practice
Angaben zur Quelle:
6,2 (2002) 131-150
Keywords:
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah.
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Abstract:
Despite its great success among readers, Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners" is flawed both from the viewpoint of methodology and from that of historical conception. Contends that Goldhagen pretends to be a social scientist, yet his book does not follow the methods of social science. Comparisons, e.g. of German antisemitism to non-German, or to other German ethnic prejudices, are glaringly absent from his book. Goldhagen is the only Holocaust historian who prefers a single-factor explanation. He identifies Holocaust perpetrators as a single homogeneous collective subject - the Germans. He deliberately ignores the vast historiography of the Holocaust, especially the functionalist school. He ignores, also, the difference between the idealized actor model and the historical actors - the Germans of that epoch. He proposes a linear model of German history, in which its pre-Holocaust past was nothing but the development of the "genocidal antisemite." Goldhagen's book is a deliberate attempt to surpass traditional Holocaust history and historians, as well as traditional historical method, an attempt which has failed.
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